topic Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines in Home Automation

Unable to find or create home or away routines

nathanperkins — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 09:20:27 GMT

I'm unable to find or create the home / away household routines.

I've:

Looked in Settings for presence sensing, but it doesn't exist.
Clicked the house name in settings and looked for home / away routines, doesn't exist.
Created and deleted a household routine to see if it will trigger the bubble to recreate the home / away routines.
Enabled location permissions for the app at all times.
Deleted and reinstalled the app.
Enabled and disabled public preview.

One thing I've noticed is that if I try to create a routine named "home" or "away", it says the "name must be unique". This implies that the routines might exist but are hidden for some reason.

I contacted support and they pointed me towards a view forums posts and docs but none of it worked.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Cathal_S — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 09:17:48 GMT

Hi nathanperkins,

On the Google Home app if you go into settings / Presence sensing, do you see your phone as an option to toggle on?

Can you also check if you have access to the new automations script editor linked below...

Automations script editor:

https://home.google.com/automations

Also linked below is more information about the home/away assist feature.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9257400

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

nathanperkins — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 09:23:32 GMT

Settings / Presence sensing doesn't seem to exist for me.
I do have the automations script editor. I was able to make and activate scripts.
That page doesn't seem to have any relevant information for when the relevant settings for home / away simply do not show.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Cathal_S — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 10:35:12 GMT

Hi again,

The Google Home app is currently in the process of an update roll out so it's possible that you might not of received that yet.

The home/away assist feature should still be available though?

Please have a look through the help center link below for troubleshooting help...

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9261396

The links below show more information about using the script editor and there's an example of creating a home/away automation that is for switching a camera on/off but can be edited for other devices.

Script examples:

https://developers.home.google.com/automations/example-scripts

Advanced automations:

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/13323253

Let us know if you are still having issues.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

nathanperkins — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 23:04:47 GMT

I've followed all the guides I could find, but they all reference settings that don't seem to exist in my app (see the original post).

The script editor doesn't show any options for home presence in auto-complete. It seems to be aware that home presence is not enabled correctly for the home.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Jrowe — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 00:17:25 GMT

I definitely have the same issue. I can't even use the nest wired 2nd gen camera in a routine. During camera setup it appears to create the routine and presence of home and away but it doesn't work. So not only can I not control it with location presence (not available for me and wife in home app) I can't turn on and off via any routine. I now have it unplugged thinking I should try a different camera.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Guijcm — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 06:10:00 GMT

Same issue here. It was there a few hours ago, and now it's gone. Can't seem to find it anywhere.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Cathal_S — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 11:56:57 GMT

Hi everyone,

I have reported this issue to the Google Nest team/community specialist's.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Alex_S — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:56:12 GMT

Hi everyone,

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention, @Cathal_S.

@nathanperkins @Guijcm, setting up Home & Away Routines requires at least one supported device. Supported devices are:

Third-party lights, plugs, or switches
Nest thermostats
Nest Cameras
Nest Hub Max
Nest Hello

Do you have any of these devices in your account?

@Jrowe, kindly try the suggested troubleshooting steps for Nest Home and Away not working.

Keep us posted.

Kind regards,
Alex

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Guijcm — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 01:03:17 GMT

Hello!

I do. I have Nest Learning Thermostat, and two Wyze Smart Plugs, all in the Home app.

Presence Sensing can be found within my app again, it randomly reappeared, I didn't change anything. It disappears here and there and randomly shows up again, and every time it asks me to confirm I'm using my current device for it. My Nest app seems to know Presence Sensing is activated because I got a message within the app that reads as follows:

Updates to Home/Away Assist Home & Away Routines are ready in the Google Homea pp Guillermo Chavarria used the Google Home app to set up Home & Away Routines for this home. This meanst hat your devices can automatically respond to these ettings in both apps. When one app switches to Home or Away, the other app will also switch. Only one app can use phone location at a time. Home & Away Routines in the Home app have new features, like the ability to automatically control lights, plugs, and Switches."

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Jrowe — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 01:58:57 GMT

Still no presence of away or home routine. I factory reset my camera and reinstalled but no change. Not much of the help documents apply because large portions of functionality do not appear for presence our routines.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

nathanperkins — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 20:08:42 GMT

Yes, I have many lights and plugs.

The home / away routines eventually appeared on their own, seemingly without any action taken by me.

There is probably a bug in the app or backend. I hope they are looking into this because the home / away routine settings seem to come and go for people without any explanation.

Now that I have access to home / away routines, I have new problems where the Nest Hub doesn't recognize the "Everybody is leaving" command and the away routine doesn't activate for 1 hour after everybody is gone from the house 🙂

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Muddi — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:42:13 GMT

Hey nathanperkins,

To confirm, is it working before? What are the actions included in your "Everybody is leaving" routine? Did you turn on the presence sensing on your device?

Cheers,

Muddi

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Guijcm — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 18:58:07 GMT

I'm actually having a similar issue too. For some reason, even though my "Away/Home" routines have no actions in them, my Nest Learning Thermostat activity shows that the "Away" routine activates every day at 8AM, even though I have never set something up. So I have to keep swapping back my Thermostat to "Home" because it keeps changing to Away on its own every morning. Not sure why that's happening if I'm not leaving my house at 8AM, nor do I have anything set up to work with the "Away" routine that activates on it's own every morning.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

nathanperkins — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 19:30:03 GMT

Yes, we have presence sensing on for multiple phones as well as our nest hubs. The actions shouldn't matter because I'm looking at the actual status of the presence for the home, which indicates "HOME" even though we just told the Nest Hub that it is away.

Sometimes we say "everybody is leaving" and it works perfectly. Other times it just responds by saying good bye, but doesn't actually take any action.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

DesertCanyon — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 05:41:36 GMT

Home and Away sensing worked perfectly on the old Nest Dropcams using the Nest app. But then I received Google's email telling me that the Dropcams would become obsolete next year and offering me a deal (only tacky white cameras, of course) if I upgraded to Google's Nest Cams. I made the terrible mistake of believing Google: I purchased replacement Nest Cams and mounted them in the exact Dropcam locations. I had no idea that this so-called upgrade was actually a downgrade in both function and app usability. And nothing in the email said I would only be able to set up the new cameras with Google Home, which has a rudimentary and clunky UI compared to the Nest App.

To get back to my main complaint, presence sensing doesn't work with Google Home, and automation doesn't allow me to select my phone as a device to trigger a routine. All this worked fine with Dropcams and the Nest app. It doesn't work at all with Nest Cams and Google Home.

Before we go any further: Yes, I contacted Google Support about this issue. I have a case number. I spent over two hours on chat with a hopelessly inept Google support agent from some third-world country who struggled with English grammar and knowledge of the Google Home app, after which I had to beg them to escalate my case to someone higher up. They said they would do so and that I would get a response via email, which I did a few days later-- and the so-called advanced emailed solutions were worse and more ill-informed than the original support I received via chat. It was almost as if the original agent passed my case ID to someone at the same level in support and never escalated my case (probably to protect their job performance metrics).

To add insult to injury, when the cameras are on and I'm away from the house, I can't watch camera clips at all. Google must not provide sufficient bandwidth for me to view the clips regardless of the strength of my network connection (cell or WiFi). So if I get an alert, I open Google Home, view a useless thumbnail, and then watch the gears spin endlessly until I get an error message that the video can't be viewed. What's the point of paying Google for a service that doesn't work? I'm getting ripped off.

[iPhone 14 Pro running the latest IOS. Gigabit Wifi with strong signal strength at the camera locations. And I have over 7 active Nest products in this home. Everything worked flawlessly with Dropcams and the Nest apps.]

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Jrowe — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 07:41:22 GMT

So I found something new today that appears to have fixed everything. I had to select the "home" drop down at the top left in the Home app. That seems to have enabled presence sensing and the home and away routines. Maybe I never noticed the drop down because the app name is also "home". Not sure... odd it suddenly works now.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Jrowe — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 18:41:46 GMT

For me that home drop down is only on the favorite tab. So maybe that is why it took so long for me to notice it.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Dspnc — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:51:25 GMT

Yes to all of this! There is no home/away or presence sensing in the Home app and I’ve tried every single suggestion on every forum. And yet for my older Nest devices home/away assist still works perfectly based on my phone location. They should not be selling devices they cannot service especially when they own a perfectly functional, user-friendly format in Nest and won’t use it.

Re: Unable to find or create home or away routines

Dspnc — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 22:52:31 GMT